I HAD NO CHOICE but to take Chen up on her offer to stay the night above her shop. We couldn’t go back to Baker Street together and I was not letting Brian out of my sight again. She helped me manoeuvre Brian into the guest bed where we stripped him down to his skivvies, which he didn’t resist at all, as malleable as a sleepy toddler. She left the room with the bundle of clothes, shaking her head at me as she closed the door.
“I thought the opium dens had all been closed down by the Yard in my grandfather’s time,” I said, pulling the worn cotton sheet up to his chest and sitting down on the edge of the bed, being careful of his injured hand, which we had left in its grimy glove.
He mumbled something I couldn’t decipher and I reached out to turn his lips my way, but he flinched. I swallowed down my bile and stood. “I can speak now, Brian, and my hearing is vastly improved but I’m going to need you to speak up. I can also get you a pencil and a pad if you’d prefer …”
He pushed himself into a shaky sitting position to look me in the eye. “I have nothing to say,” he bit out, enunciating clearly, and then he rolled onto his side away from me, his arm extended in the same way it had been before.
“The Hell you don’t,” I hissed back.
He turned back, his eyes wide at my outburst.
“You have dropped everything in favour of your pain,” I said, unable to hold back my fury. “Your family, your friends, and your job. All of it so you can wallow in misery like a … I don’t even know what.”
He threw himself out of the bed to answer, nearly tipping over with the effort. “I dropped everything? Who pushed me away at every opportunity? Who left me to explain your absence to your grandmother, the police … Who ran off with a fancy new man we know nothing about?”
“Are you kidding me? We were on the run — pursued by Box 850 and the Yard …”
Brian bent over at the waist, sweating at the effort of this confrontation. Then his head came up with a look of horror and, covering his mouth, he bolted to the window, yanking it open to puke down the back of Chen’s building.
My anger lowered to simmer at this abject demonstration of his suffering and I walked over, my hand hovering over his back as he heaved. Not touching, because I didn’t want to surprise him into hurting his hand, which, even now, he was holding away from his body. His ribs were far too visible through his skin; his back sported bed sores that spoke of how much time he spent on it. I forced my mind away from the other clues his body fed me: the scent of lilacs, perhaps from one of the helpers at the den; the bruises on his shoulder where he had fallen down cement stairs, landing badly, in an effort to spare his wounded hand. My eyes focused on his hand as he fought to catch his breath. The glove was grimy but I didn’t recognize it and on closer examination, it was silk, and bespoke, if the sewing was to be believed.
“You,” he pointed at me with his good hand between rasping breaths, “have no right to judge me.”
“I am as damaged as you are,” I retorted, my ire cooling to a dangerous level. “I’ve spent most of my recovery with disabilities you can’t even imagine, running from place to place with people I cannot trust, all while having my reputation torn to shreds in my absence.”
“I am in a pain you cannot imagine,” he said, holding up his damaged hand like it was a filthy rat he’d found in his kitchen. “The pills and the opium are all that are keeping me alive.”
He was still getting the pills? How was he affording them?
He wiped the sweat from his brow, leaning back against the windowsill. “Where are we, anyway?”
“A friend’s house,” I replied, trying to get a better look at his silken glove. There was a stitched emblem at the wrist that looked a little like a lion. “We can’t stay long. I wouldn’t want to risk involving her in this trouble, but we should be safe for tonight.”
Reminding me of my refrain to Lancaster, Brian said, “Well, you can go anytime. I’m sure I can find my way home all on my own.”
“Really? When was the last time you were home? If your trousers were any indication, they haven’t been pressed in at least a week and your mother wouldn’t be able to watch you walk out the door like that,” I said. “She’s terrified, by the way. I could tell that from a single line in a newspaper article.”
He dropped his eyes from mine and I took the opportunity to move a little closer. “Brian, I am so sorry. I am as guilty of focusing on my own pain as I just accused you.”
When he said nothing, I moved even closer so I could feel the warmth of his body, aching to be held. “I’m here to support you in your recovery. As long as it takes. Whatever it takes.”
“Won’t you need to run off and solve this bombing with your new partner?” he said, petulance hovering around the edges of the question in the quiver of his bottom lip.
I slid my arms around him. “I can’t solve this without you and we can’t get back to Baker Street until we clear my name and find the bomber. Will you help me?”
He bent his head and rested his clammy forehead against mine. “I’m so tired of this pain, Portia. I can’t sleep. I can’t think.”
“I know,” I whispered.
That night was the worst I’ve had since holding my mother as she succumbed to her cancer. Brian was at turns lucid and able to talk about his trauma and at other times so sick that his chest ached from the heaving. I kept him hydrated, washed him down with cool cloths, and warmed him back up when he shook from the cold. It took only a few hours for him to beg for his pills and then by morning he was demanding them, threatening to call the Yard and turn me in if I didn’t feed his addiction.
Chen found me sitting outside the bathroom waiting for him to wash his face and gave me a cup of hot tea. She pointed at a second cup and at the bathroom door, indicating this was for Brian. Then she showed me a small sachet of tea and pointed to his cup again.
“I understand,” I said, nodding wearily. “I will make sure he drinks it. And I promise, we will leave as soon as he is able to walk.”
Lin joined us then, freshly washed for school, his arms full of clothes. “These were my uncle’s — the pants might be a bit short on your friend, but they’re clean.”
“Thank you, Lin,” I said. “And please thank your uncle when he gets back. I will wash them and return them as soon as I can.”
Lin glanced at his aunt before answering. “My uncle died many years ago. You can keep them.”
I opened my mouth to disagree, but saw the alarm on Chen’s face and changed my mind, nodding instead, and watching Lin disappear down the stairs that would lead down to the store.
“You don’t want him to know that your husband left,” I said, once I was sure enough time had passed for the child to have left the building.
“How?” Chen asked.
“You keep these clothes in a cedar chest,” I said, holding them up to my nose. “You could be saving them for Lin, but they are quite formal and old-fashioned and he’s wearing much newer clothes, as are you. I suspect they are your husband’s wedding clothes.”
Chen nodded slowly.
“You saved his clothes, but sold his ring?” I asked, turning the shirt her way to show the slight indentation of a ring that had lain between the clothes, wrapped in wax paper for years. The wax paper had left behind slight traces as well, degrading over time. “That sounds like an angry response. If he’d died, you would have kept the ring, but if he’d left you for another woman …”
Chen’s chin hardened and I knew I’d struck close to home. I reached out. “Thank you for these. I can dispose of them once Brian is done with them and you need never think of them again.”
Brian coughed from inside the bathroom and the water started running again.
“Or is this like Gavin’s scrapbook?” I mused aloud. “Do you keep these clothes as a ward against his return?”
“No, he not come back,” Chen assured me, and then walked back to her room, her steps a little slower at the memories I had surfaced.
Brian opened the door, stopping me from pursuing her.
“I think I have thrown up or in other less pleasant ways, expelled, the entire contents of my body down to my bones,” he announced in a shaky voice.
I handed him the tea Chen had delivered. “Then drink this before we get on our way. You should have plenty of room.”